Readers' Top Ten - Manu Herbstein, Author (With a Slideshow)

Manu Herbstein is a civil and structural engineer by profession. He was born in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, in 1936 and educated at the University of Cape Town. Manu is the author of Ama - a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for First Book, and Brave Music of a Distant Drum, a sequel. Manu Herbstein has lived and worked in England, Nigeria, India, Zambia, and Scotland, and now lives in Ghana.

Today Manu shares with us his Top Ten+ African Books. I have linked some of them to reviews and other information within the blog and outside of it. Note that reviews, where they are, are my personal opinion and do not reflect Manu's.
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Dear God,

Since You have a reputation for omniscience, You will surely know that I’ve been an atheist since my teens and expect and intend to remain one until my dying day.

My dying day.

I need to talk to You about that. At 77 I’ve already received a 10% bonus on the three score years and ten promised in Your Holy Book. So I must expect to die quite soon. If not this year, then next year; and if not next year then surely within the next decade.

I don’t expect You to answer when I speak to You. However, as of course You know, I’m a writer, a story teller. I create characters, not in the flesh as Your followers claim You did with Adam and Eve, but in the imagination. And I put words into their mouths. So I can, if need be, put words into Your mouth (as, indeed, the so-called Men of God do.)

So “What is it you want to talk to Me about,” I hear You ask.

Books. My bookshelves are full of books, I reply, so full that there’s a serious overflow, onto the headboard of my bed and even piled up on my desk and on the floor.

In preparation for my departure from this earth I’ve been sorting them out, packing those I’ve read and have no wish to read again into cardboard cartons. Still, ranks of unread books stand shoulder to shoulder on the shelves, revealing only their tattooed naked spines, each one challenging me to read it first. So I want to ask You a favour: let me stay alive until I’ve read them all.

 “Nothing doing,” I hear You say (in the words I’ve put into Your mouth). “That would create a precedent.”

That’s just the answer I expected. You may be omnipotent but I don’t see much sign of Your generosity of spirit in this world. (Just think: “Syria” or “Lampedusa” or “Philippines”.)

Let me then make another proposition. When my time comes, let me take my unread books with me. I would promise to lend them to my fellow-dead as soon as I’ve finished reading them; or I might even give them away. Same answer? It’s clear that You are dead-set against establishing precedents. I guess You’re worried about overloading the clouds which support Your heavenly domain.

Dear God, won’t You let me take a hundred, just a hundred? A hundred wouldn’t last me for all eternity, but they would keep me occupied for a while.

I’ve given instructions that my dead body should be cremated. My selected hundred books could be put into my coffin and burned with me. (I’m totally opposed in principle to the burning of books, but this would be a special case.)

If human beings have souls which survive their death, I guess it might be the same with books. My soul could then read the souls of those cremated books.

You reject that too?

“It’s beyond My powers,” I hear You say.

Oh well, I thought You were omnipotent as well as omniscient, but it seems I was wrong.

Ten? Just ten? Let me be more specific: my ten favourite books by African authors. I haven’t packed them away yet because I’d like to read them again. Just ten. No one would notice. And I promise not to create a precedent by revealing Your generosity.

Your answer? Louder, please. I’m getting a little deaf as I grow older.

You agree? Did I really hear You say that You agree? Of course I did. I’m a writer. I put those words into Your mouth.

But there’s a condition? Oh, oh. I might have guessed it. Tell me, what condition? You want me to submit their titles to You in advance, my ten all-time favourite African books? I guess You’ll want to censor them. No blasphemy, right?

Well, as You know, I’m totally opposed to censorship. But what choice do I have? I’ll do as You ask right now before You change Your mind. But be patient, I beg You. It’s not easy to choose just ten books from over seventy years of reading.

I start with a long list of 17, 1 from Brazil, 2 from USA, 1 from DR Congo, 2 from Ghana, 3 from Nigeria, 1 from Senegal, 6 from South Africa, 1 from Uganda; 16 in English (1 translated from Portuguese), 1 in Afrikaans; 11 by men, 6 by women; 11 fiction, 6 non-fiction, of which 2 are history and 2 are memoirs. The Brazilian (Antonio Olinto's The Water House/A Casa de Agua) and the two Americans (Judith Gleason's Agotime, Her Legend and Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother, A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route) are disqualified since their authors are not Africans. That leaves 14. I drop Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and Sefi Atta's Everything Good Will Come on the grounds that they will surely appear on other lists. Next to go is Consuelo Roland's The Good Cemetery Guide, set in Kalk Bay just a few kilometres from Muizenberg where I grew up. Just one more to cut. That is just too much to ask. Give me another 10% bonus please: my eleven best African books.

I grew up in segregated South Africa, privileged by a 'white' skin, a middle class family, bookshelves full of books and parents who read. I had access to an excellent Carnegie Public Library. There wasn't much African in my early reading: Jock of the Bushveld, Rider Haggard and, in Afrikaans, the short stories of CJ Langenhoven, of which I recall 'Die Tolk' which described a hilarious case of serial mis-translation by a court interpreter.

My upbringing gave me none of the social and political skills required to stretch a hand across the barbed wire fence that divided South Africans. My first excursions across the colour line were through books.

Time Longer than Rope. The first of these was a chance encounter with Eddie Roux's Time Longer than Rope, first published by Gollancz in 1946. In it I discovered a completely different story from the brainwashing that passed for history in South African schools. "Ideas are difficult to suppress," Roux wrote. "The Liberatory movement has been long at work: its message has penetrated deep into the minds of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people. While racial discrimination remains the movement cannot die. There can be no going back to the old system of slavery and rural serfdom."

Down Second Avenue. The first volume of Ezekiel Mphahlele's authobiography, Down Second Avenue, was published just before I left South Africa in 1959. He had finished writing it after arriving in Nigeria as an exile in September 1957. It had an enormous influence on me and I was thrilled to meet Zeke in person when I arrived there three years later, just before Independence. Our correspondence at the time was recently published in the Chimurenga Chronic Books section under the title '50 years ago: Zeke in Nigeria.' Zeke was joint editor (with Ulli Beier) of Black Orpheus, which introduced me to the work of many young African writers including Kofi Awoonor, Wole Soyinka, Ama Ata Aidoo, Mongo Beti, and my countryman Alex la Guma, whose writing was banned back home. I would meet Zeke again many years later when we both worked in Lusaka; and for the last time, shortly before he died, in South Africa. 

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart was the first book published in the African Writers Series. That was in 1962. I read many of the AWS books as they appeared: Cyprian Ekwensi, Peter Abrahams, Ngugi, Mongo Beti, Francis Selormey, Ferdinand Oyono, Ayi Kwei Armah. In those days it was not too difficult to keep up with new African writing. Today, it's impossible. I haven't found room for any of their much-loved books in my shortlist of 11.

Frontiers. Noel Mostert's Frontiers, 1335 pages, was first published in 1992. The title refers to the shifting frontier between the whites and the amaXhosa in what the South African school history books of my youth referred to as Kaffer Wars of 1781 - 1878, nine of them in all. This is a brilliant telling of a tragic story, deeply researched and sensitive to the mutually incomprehensible differences across the cultural divide. Google tells me that Mostert is a Canadian, but he was born in South Africa and so, by my lights, he qualifies.

Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongema. I read Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongema in the original Afrikaans. In it author Elsa Joubert transcends the barriers enforced by apartheid to tell the epic story of the life struggle of a black woman who happened to be her employee. It is told with deep womanly empathy, with neither condescension nor romanticising, giving a voice to a courageous woman, effectively her co-author, who might well otherwise have passed this world unnoticed. It also served to undermine the self-confidence of South Africa's Christian Afrikaner rulers, who had persuaded themselves of the moral rectitude of apartheid.

Unconfessed. In Unconfessed, Yvette Christiansë uses fragments of documents from the archives to build a convincing portrait of an enslaved woman, known as Sila van den Kaap. Kidnapped in Mozambique in her youth and sold into slavery in South Africa, Sila is repeatedly sold and cheated. She kills her young son Baro to save him from life as a slave. Charged with infanticide, she refuses to defend her action, giving the book its title. She narrowly escapes execution and is sent to Robben Island, where she conducts a continuous conversation with the spirit of her dead son. For me, this is perhaps the finest of all South African novels written in English. My short summary fails to give it the credit it deserves. 

Search Sweet Country. Comparisons are odious, the English proverb tells us. In his introduction to Kojo Laing's Search Sweet Country, Binyavanga Wainaina rates it 'the finest novel written in English to come out of the continent.' I loved it and still love it and its marvellous characters: Beni Baidoo, Kofi Loww, Adwoa Adde, Professor Sackey, Dr Boadi, Osofo and others. First published in 1986 it is a rollicking, hilarious and affectionate portrait of Accra in the 70s and 80s. I'm sad that it's the only work by a Ghanaian in my list.

A Mouth Sweeter than Salt. It's difficult to avoid the use of exaggerated language in a short description of a favourite book. Just check Toyin Falola's academic output at Wikipedia. And the list of his books there is incomplete: missing is the 800-page Ghana in Africa and the World, Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen, which he edited. A Mouth Sweeter than Salt is a treasure. I would rate it the finest autobiographical memoir I have read. The obvious comparison is with Wole Soyinka's Ake. Forgive the odiousness of the comparison. Ake is good. A Mouth Sweeter than Salt is far, far better.

Sozaboy. Another odious comparison. I found Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun much inferior to her first novel Purple Hibiscus. One problem is that she was writing an historical novel set in a period that was not within her own memory but was within the memory of living people of my generation. She's good on the middle class, not so good on the less privileged. In Sozaboy, Saro-Wiwa, inventing what he calls rotten English, convincingly evokes the character of an ordinary young man whose wartime experiences are not of his own making. In doing so he gives a powerful, memorable, voice to one of the multitude of otherwise voiceless who were the real losers in the Biafran War. And so, as with all best stories, the local acquires a universal significance. Give me Sozaboy over Yellow Sun any day.

God's Bits of Wood. I've been a socialist since I was a teenager. It's a long time since I read Sembene Ousmane's God's Bits of Wood but it has remained in my memory as a great West African working class novel written by a man who had himself been a fisherman, plumber, bricklayer, apprentice fitter, soldier, docker and trade union leader before he became a writer and film-maker. It's time to read it again, perhaps.

Song of Lawino. At the recent conference celebrating 50 years of Institute of African Studies at Legon, I started chatting to a visiting academic. In response to my question he told me that he hailed from Uganda and that he was a political scientist. When I told him I was just then finishing re-reading a great work of Ugandan political science he gave me a curious look. I pulled out of my brief-case my well-thumbed copy of Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino. Himself an Acoli man like Okot, my new friend gave me a broad smile. Written entirely in verse, translated from Okot's own Acoli original, it's a great piece of African feminist satire written by a man and in many ways as true today as it was nearly fifty years ago when it was first published. And so funny, even if I sometimes felt that I was Lawino's target as much as Ocol.

Silences in African History. The young Nigerian literary scholar Arthur Anyaduba wrote and published an MA thesis in which he did me the honour of setting my novel Ama by the side of Zakes Mda's Heart of Redness (which, incidentally revisits some of the territory covered by Noel Mostert in Frontiers.) He sent me the chapter about Ama and in it introduced me to Jacques Depelchin's Silences in African History, published in Tanzania. I ordered a copy and read it at a sitting. I've been dipping into it ever since. Depelchin takes a hard, highly critical look at the African history written by Africanist scholars of the West, including some Africans. I'm biased in his favour perhaps, because he makes a strong case for including the work of historical novelists in the study of African history.

That's my lot. Eleven favourite books. A pity to burn them.

Manu Herbstein: Guest Writer for June

The Writers Project of Ghana (WPG) is pleased to have Manu Herbstein, author of Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, as the guest writer for June, and as usual there will be a reading at the Goethe Institute in Accra. This event, which is part of the Ghana Voices Series, will take place on Wednesday 29th June, 2011.

Manu Herbstein's novel won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in 2002. Beyond this, Manu has many other works to his credit, one of the more recent being President Michelle - Ten Days that Shook the World. The author will be reading from a variety of his works, giving a wide view of his skill and scope of writing. 

The Ghana Voices Series provides a platform to engage with writers in a friendly atmosphere. The reading will be followed by a discussion.

This programme is organised in collaboration with the Goethe Institute, Accra.

Date: Wednesday, 29th June, 2011

Time: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Location: Goethe Institute, 30 Kakramadu Road, (next to NAFTI) Cantonments, Accra.

Admission is free.

Read more about it here.

251. Ama - a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein

Ama - a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade (374; Techmate) by Manu Herbstein won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Best First Book in 2002. It explores, boldly, one of the darkest moments of human history when human beings (blacks from Africa) were traded like articles or farm animals. Assessed for defects - muscles, clear eyes, etc. - and for profitability. Thus, in that period, black men and women were no different from livestock - in treatment and in conception. 

Manu Herbstein painfully peels off the gangrenes from our necrotic wounds to show us our painful complicity as Africans in our own enslavement and therefore our debasement. To this extent Manu is in league with Ayi Kwei Armah, who in his books - Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers - showed how far we went as Africans, how lowly we bowed, how stupidly we grovelled, and how greedily we participated in our own destruction. Armah called the chiefs who stupidly surrendered our sovereignty for perks of mirror, Schnapps, and shiny clothing, Ostentatious Cripples. In Manu's work, there were such chiefs. Though this theme should have been a fodder ground for African novelists, it has hardly been touched and those who did preferred to romanticise the Africa of the time, thus narrating half the story. What most writers care to write about are the effects of the slave trade and not the event itself - at least not the entire chain of events. And those who do are academicians who only discuss it in essays and academic writings thus taking the story away from the larger majority to whom such academic discourse remains a mystery. It is in the light of this that Manu's well-researched novel plays an important and significant role in the telling of this horrific story, this stain in human history.

The story follows one character Nandzi, a Bekpokpam girl, who was captured by the Bedagbam slave hunters in present day northern Ghana, as part of hundreds of slaves who had to be sent to the King of the Asantes as payment for the annual tax placed on them by the latter after a defeat in a war. Thus, as Nandzi moved from her home village to Yendi and then from there to Kumase, the capital of the Asante Kingdom, her story - which is synonymous to the story of the slave trade - unfolds in graphic details. In Kumase she was given as a gift to the Asantehemaa (the Queenmother of the Asantes), where she worked as a servant girl and where the name Ama was given her. But a misfortune befell her when after the death of the ailing king, the young one who succeeded him, Osei Kwadwo, fell in love with him. To avoid embarrassment to the kingdom, she was sold to the slave traders along the coast to be shipped across the sea. Thus, Manu's story is more than the story of the Atlantic slave trade. It is also about the internal slavery that existed among ethnic groups of the time. For Ama was first an internal slave to the Asantes before she was sold to the Dutch and would have forever remained so had it not being her poor judgement.

Another important issue this book raises was those macabre traditions that existed at the time like beheading of people - mostly non-royals - upon the death of a king, for burial. Here Manu's dexterity in bringing images alive with his precise words, made these macabre and grisly parts difficult to read. However, they are also important and contribute to the story of the slave trade; for they show how far we have come as a people.

The role the autochthons played in the slavery enterprise were not limited to the supply of men, but also included its funding, and even directly buying and selling of slaves to support their acquired taste for those foreign goods the slave ships bring in when coming to load the slaves. This is clear in the case of Augusta, a black woman who was neck-deep in the trade herself. Also, some of the people - chiefs and elders and other denizens - worked to keep the slave trade bourgeoning and physically fought those who opposed them. An instance of this occurred in another location, possibly on the more western part of Africa (Senegal). Tomba, the son of a man who himself had escaped from chains and a woman whom the man had saved from being transported as a slave, had worked to prevent several potential slaves from being shipped abroad. Consequently, he established a village with these freed slaves and together attacked every ship that docked at the village to purchase men and women and children as slaves. With time the business became unprofitable as ships docked less and less. However, the people of the village - unhappy with this decline in trade and wealth - enlisted the help of a captain of a ship that had come to dock, attacked Tomba and his men with sophisticated weapons and arrested them as slaves. 

The conditions in the dungeons, where the captured men and women were kept, the persistent rape of the women, beating of the women who resisted, the conditions on the slave ships, the conditions they met the on the ship, and the work the slaves are put to were discussed in their heart-wrenching details. The diseases and the deaths were more than a person should bear, yet it became their lives. Ama was raped by several men as she made her way from her native village to the Edina where the Elmina Castle was (is) located. First she was raped by Abdulai, leader of the the slave hunters who took her from her home; then by Akwasi Anane, a drunk Asante who was to watch over them as they journeyed to Kumase; then by Jensen, who became the new Mijn Heer after the death of Debruyn; and Jesus Vasconcellos, when she was taken to Brazil. And there were those who took her, and to whom she gave herself, because there were no other choices to be made. This included De Bruyn, who took her as his partner, renamed her Pamela, lived with her for several years, thought her to read and write and do maths, and was ready to marry her before his sudden death; and Captain David Williams - captain of the slave ship The Love of Liberty, when she planned for their escape. Some reviewers discussed Ama's treatment as a metaphorical representation of Africa in general and women in particular. Here Ama becomes that Africa raped by its European invaders, colonisers, and neo-colonisers, and also by its Eurocentric and parochial Africans whose thoughts are filled with the satisfaction of their personal needs, regardless of the means. Today, there still are the Tombas and Amas fighting to liberate the continent from the shackles of economic slavery, and the Augustas and Tomba's opponents who work to benefit themselves. 

The role of Christianity in entrenching slavery cannot be overlooked. In fact, no matter how one looks at it, it will be difficult to deny that Christianity was deeply embedded in the enslavement of the people and the slave trade itself. It is exceedingly shocking that the irony was lost to the slaves who took up the religion. However, Ama - having learnt how to read and write, noticed the irony that existed in that religion including the part of the Lord's Prayer "as we forgive those who trespassed against us..." (P. 230). Even though the missionaries were preaching the love of God towards man, they asked blacks to be meek. Thus, it created and entrenched the idea that the black man was not the man God was referring to in the bible, for even in the presence of God there was discrimination and the relegation of blacks.

This relation between the white and the blacks regarding culture and how the blacks were aping the whites is the theme of Kobina Sekyi's The Blinkards and The Anglo-Fante Short Story. However, in no one did this cultural buffoonery reach an apogee of disastrous proportions than in Reverend Philip Quaque, a chaplain at the Cape Coast Castle. This historical figure, as are many of the characters in this story, would not speak in his native language - Fante - and would not respond when spoken to in it. He considered English as a divine and civilising language. In fact, he considered his native Fantes who weren't Christians and who could speak no English as pagans and their names heathenish. To complete this absurd transformation he married a white lady. Also, like the character in Sekyi's play, most families saw the marriage of their daughters to the white men as key to success and like in the case of Taguba, sometimes mothers kidnapped and sold their daughters into such unions. However, this obsequious grovelling before the white man was not restricted to only the supposedly free folks but also those in his chains exhibited such reverential tendencies. Sometimes even the oppressed (the shackled and manhandled slaves) still grovel and marvelled at the white man's beauty and intelligence.

"Me broni," said another to a young seaman, "wo ho ye fe se anoma," meaning, "My precious white man, you are as beautiful as a bird" [228]

There were several sources of disunity among blacks that worked against them; sources, which are as germane to our unity and development today as they were at the time of slavery. The first is the role of language. With almost every ten slaves [my speculation] speaking a different language and none capable of understanding the other, this Babel of tongues worked against them. Thus, when Ama worked to free the slave ship from the captain, it was this which acted as a barrier to their freedom. Unable to understand each other, the escape was botched and the culprits punished so severely that some died and were fed to the sharks and others lost parts of their bodies; Ama for instance, lost an eye when one of the hooks at the end of the whip hooked onto it and came out when it was forcefully pulled. However, upon reaching Brazil, faced with a common Portuguese language they were able to come together for a common purpose.

Another source of disunity arose from their diversity: that is, the usual suspicion one person holds against the other because one cannot comprehend what the other is saying. In this way, consensus building and making a decision became a problem. Each unit - a unit being people who could understand themselves - worked for its own good but in the end led to nothing because it was working sometimes against the whole. 

The other source of disunity lay in favour-seeking: for the fear of repercussions and punishment, to seek favour and promotion from their masters, there were those other slaves who were more inclined to do the bidding of their masters even to the detriment of their people and sometimes, most often after a rise in rank, would do more than what they have been instructed to do to please their masters. These others were more likely and did indeed betray all plans of escape whenever they came to be in the know.

Race or colour also became a matter of importance, which affected the unity of the people even in their new country. For instance, the slaves who had been ferried earlier into the Americas thought themselves better than the new arrivals; claiming that they are more civilised 

"Don't call me brother, woman. I am not an unseasoned guiney bird like you," he replied. "Now stand in line so that master can look at you properly." [295]

Similarly, those who were born in captivity, especially the Mulatto breeds, considered themselves better than the rest and were more inclined to serve the interest of their white side than their black side, though they were never treated any better by the white men. This quest and eagerness among people to be superior to their kin even when they are facing a common enemy was addressed in Bessie Head's Maru. 

And if the white man thought that Asians were a low, filthy nation, Asians could still smile with relief - at least, they were not Africans. And if the white man thought Africans were a low, filthy nation, Africans in Southern Africa could still smile - at least, they were not Bushmen. [6]

Linked to race is the monarchic system of governance, which also encouraged the slave trade. The monarchical structure puts people into either inferior or superior class. Thus, in England and Portugal mere white wasn't a guarantee of a better treatment. These non-royals and mistreated people also looked at blacks and say we are better than them, creating a situation where there is no remorse for maltreatment but a justification. For Africans, this royalty and monarchy encouraged the arrest and sale of 'inferior' tribes and non-royals of the same tribe into slavery.

Overall, Ama was hardworking and resourceful; she loved freedom too. She helped whomever she could. Yet she was never free to do anything; she was always under somebody's command, as a slave - sexual and non-sexual.

The language in this novel is effective and fits the era being discussed. Interspersing the narrative are proverbs - common in most African languages and with African people - and folkloric tales. Manu's diction and descriptions did not make the period as antiquated and backward as one might have expected. For instance, he talks of inns and hostelries in a remote area of current Ghana in the 18th Century. There was also talk of international trading (at Kafaba), customs and exports.

This is a well-researched novel, filled with historical figures and events that one would not help but shiver at the enormity of human wickedness, the depths to which man could fall. For this is just the story of one individual - Nandzi (or Ama or Pamela). Take this and multiply it by the millions and millions of people who were transported across to those lands and those who died on the way and it is only then would one understand the importance of what Manu has done; for

African slaves were sold in Lisbon as early as 1441. The European discovery and colonisation of the Americas set the scene for the transatlantic slave trade, which lasted from early in the sixteenth century until the second half of the nineteenth. The slaves were all African. So too were many of those who sold them. The buyers and shippers were almost all Europeans. In the course of three hundred years, upwards of ten million black men, women, and children arrived in the Americas as unwilling migrants. Millions more died on the journey to the Atlantic coast, and at seas. [Epigraph to the section Americas, 203]

My only problem is that some places - though not widespread - were somewhat preachy. The telling of this story itself evokes deep imagery of wickedness, evil, and the moral failure of the time and therefore I believe those statements were not very needed. In addition, there were one or two dramatic events like Ama fainting upon seeing Tomba again, after their separation at the place where they were sold. However, this also set the scene for a beautiful love story at a subplot level. Regardless of these, which are not necessarily a failing, this book deserves to be read by all. It should be an important part of Africa's literary canon.

However, there are some questions that bothered me when reading this and which we will need to discuss:

1. Would the slave trade have ended if it had not been banned in Europe? That is, would and could Africans have worked to ending it? 
2. Did we as Africans ever realise that slavery was bad?

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About the author: Manu Herbstein, a civil and structural engineer by profession, was born in Muizenberg, near Cape Town, in 1936 and educated at the University of Cape Town. His Jewish grandparents, he writes, had "emigrated to South Africa in the 1890s. Two from Russia, one a Litvak, her husband a Romanian, whose name I bear."

Manu Herbstein has lived and worked in England, Nigeria, India, Zambia, and Scotland, and now lives in Ghana. He first visited the slave castle at Elmina, Ghana, which features in this novel, in 1961. He has returned many times since and says that the experience never fails to move him.

Additions to my Library

It's been a long time since I went into a bookshop. However, thanks to the Writers Project of Ghana's monthly book reading titled Ghana Voices Series, I have purchased two autographed novels from the June and July readings.

The first book I purchased was Ama: the Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein. Manu Herbstein is a South African who has lived and worked in several countries including India, Nigeria and Ghana, but has been living in Ghana for sometime now. His novel won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize Award for Best First Book. From GoodReads:

Thrust into a foreign land, passed from owner to owner, stripped of her identity. This is the life of Nandzi, who was given the name Ama, a name strange to her and her tribal culture. A life of struggle and resignation, bondage and freedom, passion and indifference, intense love and remorseless hate. Though forced into desperation, Ama never lets her soul be consumed by fear. While the stories of individual slaves have been blurred into one mass, Ama's story personifies the experience of eighteenth-century Africans in an unforgettable way. Her entrancing story of defiance and spiritual fire starts from the day she is brutally seized, raped, and enslaved, and ends with her breathing the pure air of freedom. AMA is a deeply engrossing and colorful novel, packed with violence, sex, and action. The resiliency of her spirit will grip readers from the first page to the last of Manu Herbstein's spellbinding novel.

The next book I purchased was the one read by Fiona Leonard titled The Chicken Thief. Fiona is an Australian living in Ghana. She's worked with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and has spent some time travelling around the world and writing speeches, ministerial briefings, reports and press releases. From the book's cover:

Alois is The Chicken Thief, an intelligent young man struggling to find his way in a southern African country wracked by political unrest and a crumbling economy. A chance encounter gives Alois the opportunity to make some fast money, and hopefully improve his future. However, his assignment goes horribly wrong, and he unexpectedly finds himself in the midst of a complicated and perilous struggle to rescue a war hero and transform the political landscape. Though something of an unlikely hero, Alois ultimately learns that both dreams and justice are within his grasp.

Manu Herbstein at Africa Book Club

One of my reading challenges is to read the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa Region Winners (Best and First book winners) and on this list is Manu Herbstein's Ama, A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade. This story won the award in the first book category in 2002. Manu Herbstein was interviewed by Africa Book Club. Issues discussed ranges from his dual citizenship, how he came to write this novel and what the future holds for him as a writer. According to the structural engineer cum writer, it is best for the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to sponsor writers than their futile search of past presidents to award. Here is an excerpt of the interview. 

Tell us a little about yourself, and your background.

My grandparents arrived in what was then the Cape Colony in the last decade of the nineteenth century. They had fled religious persecution in Eastern Europe. (I was brought up as a Zionist but I now look forward, though with faint hope, to the day when Palestinians and Israeli Jews can agree to live together in a single secular state.) I grew up near Cape Town and studied there until I left South Africa in 1959. I planned to return after the demise of apartheid, which seemed unlikely to survive the sixties. It took longer than expected and in the meantime I put down roots in Ghana. These days I try to spend December and January in Cape Town.

What's the story behind your dual-citizenship? We understand you are both South African and Ghanaian.

I first went to Ghana in 1961, drawn there by the charisma of Kwame Nkrumah. I worked there until 1963; and again from 1965 to the end of 1966. I have lived in Ghana since 1970, so when the citizenship requirements were relaxed it made sense to apply. I’ve had a Ghana passport since 2006. I retained my South African citizenship throughout the years of apartheid, though it sometimes required subterfuge to have my passport renewed.

Click here to read the full interview.

NEW PUBLICATION: Brave Music of a Distant Drum by Manu Herbstein

Brave Music from a Distant Drum by Manu Herbstein is a sequel to Ama - a story of the Atlantic Slave Trade. In my review of the first book, I stated that this is a book that needs to be read by all. It is an introduction to an understanding of what really went on during the slave trade. It takes the story away from statistics and figures - this number of people were taken, that number of people died. It shows you the human dimension of that unpardonable activity. It shows you that slaves were not taken out of Africa; rather people were taken out and made slaves. It is a human story with unrestrained treatment. I expect the sequel to follow similar lines. To continue the story and to peel off the wounds. For instance, one would want to know what happened to Ama after the death of Tomba. And will their son be as rebellious as the two of them were? The following are some reviews of the sequel:

[Glenys Bichan, Cambridge High School Library, New Zealand, May 23, 2012] Today Ghana is on my heart, I have been there 4 times now and will go again in October. This book is about a slave called Ama, she is old and dying but with an amazing tale to tell, she is blind and cannot write her story, so she tells it to her son. It is a tale of violence, heartache, a story of hope and courage, determination and ultimately love. It is a story of Ghana, of its wonderful people, stolen and taken to a foreign land. How many of my Ghana friends have family in south USA- I often wonder that. What gifts and talents were stolen from one land in violent selfish greed and transported to another place. I went with some of my Ghana friends to a slave castle on the Cape Coast, with us were young men and woman 15-16 years of age. As I stood with them at the 'door of no return" and in silence we gazed - I felt an overpowering sense of filth, that I was in some way connected to British slave trading and that these wonderful kids were the ones my forebears shunted through that door- it was a sickening feeling. Do you know what they did - hugged me! Ama - scream your story!!! 

[Keilin Huang, May 2012] There are some stories that touch you and some that change you. This is what Kwame Zumbi discovers after a visit with his blind mother. Initially turned off by her physical condition and what Kwame sees as a sinful lifestyle (she refuses to call him by his Christian name name and she doesn’t attend a Christian church)  he eventually learns of a past that he has long forgotten and indeed that he has chose to forget. Ama has a story to tell, one that “lies within me, kicking like a child in the womb” and she summons her son, Kwame, to write it down as she dictates to him. Kwame is impatient with Ama and finds her “old and blind…unwell and…ugly,” but as her story unfolds, he realizes just how amazing her journey has been. From Ama’s comfortable beginnings in her hometown to her relationship with a Dutch governor that brought her across foreign waters to the hardships she faced while on the English slave ship, The Love of Liberty, Kwame learns not only about his earlier life, but ultimately just how powerful and influential his mother’s story can be.

Brave Music of a Distant Drum is an amazing story that gives a deep, and sometimes difficult, account of the slave trade. It’s not an understatement to say that Herbstein’s tale is a vital part of history and a key to understanding cross-cultural relations today. 

A Reader's Top Ten - Nana Fredua-Agyeman (A Reader)

The most difficult thing to do is creating a list of top favourite items - books, movies, etc. Regardless of what one does, one can and will never be satisfied with a list. Creating a top list of favourite books become even more difficult for people with uncontrollable reading habits, as some participants of Readers' Top Ten alluded to. For a book, the questions or considerations that come to mind include genre: fiction or non-fiction; poetry, prose, drama, creative non-fiction, memoirs, or essays. These things are incomparable as flowers and sheep. See? A story may stay with you because of the prose; another, because of the story - the theme; another, because you can relate - personally - to the subject discussed; others, because they purvey information you never knew.

However, in order that I am not perceived as a dictator who only commands but does not follow his own rules and commandments, I have decided to share with you my Top Ten African books. Note that this is a fluid list and anyone who asks for my Top Ten at another point in time should not accuse me of lies if I mention a different list. Also note that I may take the liberties some contributors took.

To begin with, I define an African book as any book written by an African. An African, per my list, is any individual who is a citizen of any African country by virtue of birth or naturalisation or any first or second generation African in the diaspora who still think he or she is African. Some will kill you if you told them they are Africans; they are not members of this backwater of a continent.

These are what I have cut out: Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God; Walton Golightly AmaZulu; Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born; Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk; Steve Biko's I Write What I Like, Manu Herbstein's Ama - the Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade; Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard. Having cleared the way, I give you my Top Ten African Books (in no particular order):

Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. This book is on my all-time favourite list. This is the book Ngugi was writing to write. It encapsulates all the books he had written from the days of Weep Not Child, A Grain of Wheat, Matigari, The River Between, and others. However, better than these books, this beauty of a book has a large dose of humour, like in Matigari. It's like preparing a juice and infusing it with your favourite flavour. Mine is strawberry. In WOTC, Ngugi delicately and beautifully balances satire and sincerity, sustaining it throughout the over 700-page novel. There is not a boring word, line, sentence, paragraph or page. If Ngugi had written just this book, it would still have defined his life's work and would have earned him all the accolades he now receives. Reading this book will make you understand how today's politics are played and how dictatorship could be accommodated in democracies. This book is far better than Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by Ahmadou Kourouma, though they both treat similar subject with slightly similar styles.

Repudiation by Rashid Boudjedra. Repudiation was a banned book in the author's home country of Algeria. This is not why I like it. I like it because of the surreal and Kafkaesque style Boudjedra adopted. The book's focused investigation begins at the micro or family level and progresses gradually, adding on several limbs, to the macro or national level. Regardless of the issues being investigated - religion, sex, and sexual orientation, the state, plight and rights of women in a patriarchal state - the theme of 'repudiation' runs through. 

Mr Happy and the Hammer of God by Martin Egblewogbe. This is a collection of fantastic short stories that follow the tradition of Kafka. In this collection Martin did something I wish African writers will do more in their stories - philosophical investigation into life and existence as a whole. This book deeply explores the mind and the metaphysical with such a passion and intensity that other storytellers lack. As part of the world, we need to also participate in the broader discourse of existence. What we have done is to just list our problems - slavery, politics, poverty, dying children, and depravity - in NGO-ese, describing them as stories, when we can launch an intellectual investigation into these issues, which are a collective part of our existence, including breathing, sleeping, having sex, and others. Read Martin's book for a change. 

Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah. It is no secret that I love this book and all of Armah's books. He is one of my favourite authors. Some authors have described this book as 'woody' and 'not a novel', because of its disregard to plot and the general structure of a novel. But I found this novel deep, profound, and eye-opening. And I don't care about academic dictates and rules concerning what a novel is and is not. Without experimentation we will not develop. Rules are for the conservatives. Two Thousand Seasons is a story that shreds certain long-held beliefs into tatters. In this book, institutions and what had been referred to, wrongly though according to Armah's Narrative, as Tradition - such as the Chieftaincy and the inequality against women - do not stand up to Armah's critical observation and construct. Two Thousand Seasons is an important book. It is such a different kind of a book.

Search Sweet Country by Kojo Laing. Could there be an author who could own a language like Laing does? Well, I do not know. What I know is that Kojo Laing is a master at what he does. In this book, he does away with the straitjacket novelistic requirements. Those narrow rules that call for a plot, an arch, and such and such. Laing is the persona in that famous Frost's poem, for he takes the road less travelled, weaving words in unique patterns to tell a story and it is this boldness to chart his own course that sets him apart from other African writers. The words in this book performs magic on their own. You'll someone dropping his laughter and another picking and carrying her words.

Famished Road by Ben Okri. What I liked about Famished Road is its magic of words and of the world Okri described. Okri created a world all his own. He capitalises on the African's abundant belief in the spiritual world, or the supernatural, to tell his stories, presenting the reader with a cascade of fantastic images and challenging descriptions. In this book, he never faltered. From one scene to the other, one encounters strange events. Do not predict if you are reading Okri.

The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer. Nadine Gordimer, 'who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity', is Africa's only female Nobel Laureate in Literature, not that the continent has had many. Her writings are tedious and demanding, told as if it was viewed through a roving telescope. They unveil their content slowly and what they show are deeper scenes of human failings and humanity. Her works cover the effects of the apartheid regime on the lives of the people. Their slowness, plainness, mirror the country's landscape, including their reticence and spurts of anger. There is some sort of distance between her characters and the land: for the Whites who have come to own the land, the distance is both physical and spiritual. It looks as if they are unable to fully occupy the land, to possess it as a man would possess a wife he loves. Their behaviour is like a poor man who has borrowed the cloth of a rich man for a funeral. On the other hands, the blacks who own the land spiritually, are forced to physically live on the periphery. This sense of incompleteness and desolation is common in most South African novels I have read.

I was torn between this book and Burger's Daughter and even July's People. Any one of these could have been here. In The Conservationist, which won the 1974 Booker Prize, Nadine Gordimer told a story about a rich white South African who had occupied large tracts of land but who is not happy and is not capable of bequeathing it to his heirs. His loneliness contrasts a black stranger who died on his farm but for whom the black squatters on Mehring's farm organised a funeral. 

A Question of Power by Bessie Head. To begin with, Bessie Head is an excellent writer. Her prose are always a delight to read. And I may have read all her published books with the intention of writing a paper on her writings, which I never got to do. In A Question of Power, she describes different mental states and what goes on in the mind once it is under attack from unseen forces. More importantly, the book discusses power relations in all its forms: sexual, political, mental, etc. There is a lot to gain from reading Bessie Head. She has a keen sense of observations.

Underground People by Lewis Nkosi. I love this book for its prose. The uniqueness of Lewis Nkosi's Underground People lies in its beautiful, fast-reading, and tension-building prose. And his ability to satirise South Africa's apartheid system whilst still keeping its seriousness, its human suffering closer to the reader. His approach to writing in this book is unique. Nkosi is known more for his academic writings.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Half of a Yellow Sun is Chimamanda's second novel. It follows Purple Hibiscus. It deals with the history of the Biafran War. At the time of reading this, the Biafran War was just a historical term to me. I considered it one of those things that happened. However, Chimamanda's book brought out the human side of a war that took the lives of many great individuals and destroyed the psyche of others forever. I like the back and forth way Adichie wrote this novel, and the ending. It makes you think.

Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. This is one funny book. In fact, the events after the publication of the book is even funnier. When the name Matigari (the book was written first in Gikuyu) became popular, the Kenya Government ordered the police to arrest 'Matigari', ignorant that it was just a book. When they realised that it was just a book, they raided shops and burnt every copy. The author followed the book into exile.

Readers' Top Ten - Edzordzi G. Agbozo (A Writer)

Edzordzi G. Agbozo is a budding poet, writer and blogger and won the University of Ghana Community Excellence Award (Creative Arts category) in 2012. He was the convener of the Book and Discussion Club of the Writers Project of Ghana. Edzordzi's poem The Hippo turned our Canoe dedicated to Prof Awonoor was published on this blog. He blogs at edordzi.blogspot.com and ghanavoice.wordpress.com.

Edzordzi shares with us his Top Ten African books. The only rule in this is that the books be written by an African; the person submitting the list has to define this for himself or herself. I have linked some of the titles to posts within ImageNations, where such reviews are available. Note that my views on these books may drastically differ from Edzordzi's views and so this must be borne in mind when reading those reviews.

The Poor Christ of Bomba by Mongo Beti

It is a cross-cultural evangelism and feminist sociological novel. The Reverend Father Superior Drumont is a lovely and complicated character: true believer, rigid moralist, a self-righteous, (little) dictator, negligent. He never understood his role in a shocking web of corruption in his parish. He mirrors all of us who look outside and blame people for our problems. I love the funny descriptions though they are satirically serious.

Taboo by Mawuli Adzei

This novel is REAL. I mean very real. It is a newspaper reporting happenings in Accra just as the women were being killed and their parts used for rituals. The bodies are found and yet no single family could identify one dead person. It also reveals power play, spirituality and hypocrisy in the name of God. Being a first novel, it is much welcomed. I am patiently waiting for The Jewel of Kabibi by the same author.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is a soul and conscience tormenting novel. It is full of domestic and religious realities that are so much hidden. It is only a writer who can see. The plot is very undulating, giving a surprise, suspense, breath-taking, and surprise format. I think though that some characters are too exaggerated.

A Question of Power by Bessie Head

This book is a great statement on our common painful humanity. The pain caused by humans on others. It is really a question and that question never get answered and I don't think it will ever be answered since humanity cannot be sincere enough in answering the question. I love the psychic twist to the whole story.

The Blind Kingdom by Veronique Tadjo

The style is amazing. It is new and unique: poetry cum long and short narratives. The plot is very simple but beautifully elevated beyond the Romeo and Juliet narrative. The story is a clear allegory for the conflict in the Ivory Coast, both past and present but hopefully not in the future. I enjoyed the book. It was a quick read, mostly due to its poetic language.

The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

It reminds me of my childhood stories of gory scenes, super humans and spirits. Each time I read it, the child in me becomes more present and I recall those emotions I felt those days. The style is also great.

Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah

This is the novel that posed the greatest challenge at first reading but became like a Bible after breaking through the coded and highly sophisticated plot and style. Its historical education and contemporary probe of the real essence of African independence is relevant. After all, the freedom fighters only end up wearing the gowns and shoes of the masters.

Children of Gebelaawi by Naguib Mahfouz

It is a quiet confusing novel. It is more important than just a story. It is a revelation of a sort and or a prophesy? It is philosophical on another level too. I love the language complexities.

Ama - a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein

It brings out the various levels of the dehumanising effect of the slave trade on all kinds of persons - women, children and men. The descriptions are very deep and emotional.

The Place We Call Home by Kofi Anyidoho

It is a detailed report on world history parcelled in a powerful collection of poetry. The cadence and the rhythm of the poems come alive in the incantations, chants and songs recorded on the attached CDs. This brings to bear the quintessential African oral tradition. Indeed, sound is older than the written word.

NOTE: Let me also mention that Ama Ata Aidoo, Kojo Laing, Femi Osofisan, and Tsitsi Dangarembga are very interesting writers. They posses unique styles and voices.

July in Review, Projections for August

July was an extremely slow month. It happened to be the month that ushered in the reading fatigue that usually comes when one has been consistently reading. Last year, the fatigue months were May, June and August, where I read the least. 

In my review of June's reading activities I projected to read four books, hoping that I could add another one to get to the average of five per month required to meet the challenge. However, July had its own ideas and I had to suspend reading for days. I have read (almost) three of the four projected books:

• Ama - a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein. [374 p.] This is an engaging story about the slave trade. It is not only about the Atlantic slave trade but also about the kind of internal slavery that existed among the tribes. It is an interesting book that needs to be read by all.
• God Dies by the Nile by Nawal El Saadawi. [175 p.] Nawal was in her elements in this story. This is a book or a story about the political, religious, and economic oppression of women and of men. It is also about the religious fanaticism and religious impotence.
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. [in the final pages] [813 p.] This book is about aristocratic life in Russia, the sham and the facade. But it is more about the social laws of marriage and divorce that existed at the time and how religion influences everything. It is also a tragic love story.

On the other hand, July was full of literary activities. There were two readings by Taiye Selasi, neither of which I attended. However, I attended a reading organised by Invisible Borders - The Trans-African Project which featured the author of The Spider King's Daughter, Chibundu Onuzo, and Emmanuel Iduma, author of Farad at the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) house in Accra. Two days later, Nii Ayikwei Parkes (author of Tail of the Blue Bird) organised a reading that featured Chibundu and Martin Egblewogbe, author of the short story anthology Mr Happy and the Hammer of God at the Sytris Bookshop.

On the 24th of last month, Nana Malone was the guest reader of the monthly book reading organised by the Writers Project of Ghana and the Goethe Institut under the Ghana Voices Series. The Book and Discussion Club also met on Tuesday July 31, to discuss the book of the month God Dies by the Nile by Nawal El Saadawi. The Sunday before this, I talked about Saadawi's book on Writers Project on Citi, a weekly radio programme organised by the Writers Project of Ghana.

Thus, even though my reading slumped my participation in literary activities increased.

August is an uncertain month. I am not sure which books I will be reading and so I am not going to predict anything. I have purchased a few books from the readings I attended and so might depend on them.

#Quotes: Quotes from Manu Herbstein's Ama - A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade

No one knows what the elephant ate to make it so big. [40]

The Tail of the elephant may be short ... but it can still keep the flies away. [40]

[A]t another's hearth, you do not have the same freedom you might have in your mother's kitchen. [71]

Chapel. You don't know what chapel is? That is their room where they go to worship their gods. It is in the charge of the chaplain, who is like a fetish priest for them, an Okomfo you know, except that he does not know how to dance. ... Sometimes the chaplain tells them stories which he says comes out of a special book. That books is one of their main fetishes. Mijn Heer tried to tell me some of the stories when we were married. Some were not bad, but most were rubbish. I told him he should listen rather to our Ananse stories, they are much more entertaining and there is always a lesson to be learned from them. [136]

De Bruyn had tried to fit her feet into a pair of his late wife's shoes, but the foot of a female slave who has walked many weary miles on her own tough soles is very different from that of the idle lady wife of a Director General of the Westindische Compagnie; and so, under her spreading skirt, Ama's feet remained unshod. [142]

Van Schalkwyk had a reputation in the Castle as something of a dirty old man. His penchant for making accidental body contact with female slaves and, believing no know else to be watching, for grabbing their buttocks or their breasts, had not gone unobserved. He was inhibited, however, from taking a concubine by fear of the consequences of breaching Company rules, by fear moreover that his status in the Castle would be undermined and by the certainty that eternal damnation would be his reward for fornication. Minister Van Schalkwyk led a secret life of unconsummated sexual fantasy. [143]

A lonely man, Quaque, too. He despises his own people for the heathens that they are. He is really a kind of black Englishman. He says the English tongue was sent by heaven as a medium for religion and civilisation. On that account he will not use his native Fanti and indeed he claims he can no longer speak it or understand it. [151]

He sees every female slave as just a vagina on two legs, she thought bitterly, not for the first time. [170]

She seems a sensible wench. However I must tell you that I disapprove in principle of teaching slaves and others of the labouring classes more than the bare minimum they need to perform their duties. It is in general prejudicial to their morals and happiness. It persuades them to despise their lot in life, rather than making good servants of them. Instead of wearing their yoke with patience, they become ill-mannered and intractable. [174]

Curiosity is unbecoming in the female sex. This girl's curiosity surely comes from your teaching her to read. An ability to read is prejudicial in any woman, in a slave doubly and triply so. It opens them to ideas unsuited to their station in life. [176]

If you examine the weapons closely you will soon discern the reason. Warfare is endemic on this part of the coast. Most of the slaves who come to us are prisoners of war. If we did not sell arms and ammunition, there would certainly be less warfare and the supply of slaves might dry up. There is, however, a distinction between between the quality of arms required for such local warfares as will ensure us a steady supply of slaves, and weaponry that might pose a threat to ourselves. Beyond that we do of course exercise some discrimination in the choice of our customers: we would not want even weapons of inferior quality turning up in the hands of potential enemies. [177-8]

"Maame," said Ama, "I saw the slaves arrive"

"Well?"

"I watched them with Mijn Here's telescope. I looked at their faces, one by one, as they came up from the bridge."

Augusta turned her head to look at Ama.

"And so?" she asked coolly. [178-9]

Sunday 10 a.m. Conducted morning service at 8 a.m. Gave thanks to God for the successful prosecution of this little adventure. Some ninety males, females and children were captured in the battle. Ten bodies were found and an unknown number escaped into the forest. The leader called Captain Tomba, was captured. He is reported to have put up a courageous and prolonged resistance, but that might well be an exaggeration designed to enhance the reputation of the victors. I have retrieved the four-pounder, resisting pressure to sell it to the local chief. Five of the attacking force succumbed and one of my men was slightly wounded. [216]

She chatted away to Tomba as she worked. Not since Sami's abduction had he felt the gentle touch of a woman's hand. He warned himself not to permit this woman's kindness to undermine his stern resolve to have no part in his own oppression; but then he weakened. What choice did he have, after all? [250]

The Angolans left immediately after the Mass. They had all been baptised en masse before leaving the shores of their native land. Each carried a certificate of baptism in the form of an imprint of the royal crown of Portugal, burned into the skin of their breasts with a red hot iron. This brand, Jacinta told Ama bitterly, served also as a receipt for export duty paid to the Portuguese King. [308]

Until we learn to read and write, we will never be able to defeat them and regain our freedom. But tell me, where did you get the book? [314]

Our greatest enemy is not the whites. It is our own disunity. They know that, of course, and they encourage it. Their Christian religion is one of the weapons they use to divide us. That, by the way, was why I disturbed you when you told me the book you were reading was their Bible. [326]

_____________

Read the review here